The Santa Fe Film Festival boasts steeply heightened standards this year; as a result, the number of films dropped from last year’s 250 to fewer than 150 this year. The powers that be at the SFFF have hopes that the festival will soon be as well-known and respected as its cousins Sundance, Toronto and Telluride, and the upped standards reflect this shift in mind-set.

Author Margaret Moore Booker spent 10 years visiting Santa Fe from the East Coast before she realized that life is too short to put off living in a place you love. She moved from Nantucket to Santa Fe five years ago and hasn’t looked east since. While living in Nantucket, she co-wrote a book about its historical architecture and, shortly after arriving in New Mexico, she began researching The Santa Fe House.

The day before riding the Star Train, I sat down to lunch with Peter Lipscomb and Robert Hoyle, two self-proclaimed “astrononerds” who spend their days talking about the skies and their nights gazing into them.

There’s evidence Americans are under the erroneous impression that puppet shows are only for kids. But if the minds behind the Holiday Open House at the New Mexico Museum of Art have their way, adults will get over it and enjoy toys just as much as children do.

Madrid, NM, and its Christmas light displays were known all over the world during the first few decades of the 20th century. Even Walt Disney is fabled to have been enamored of Madrid, thrilled by its devotion to luminescent displays around the holidays; he spent time in northern New Mexico while filming The Nine Lives of Elfego Baca in Cerrillos in the ’50s.

Cathy Maier Callanan, a professional photographer who cofounded the Santa Fe Photographic Workshops, makes her living shooting portraits and wedding albums. But on the side, she uses her craft and passion to help those in need. Her most recent project is Face the Homeless, a series of portraits of homeless adults and children in and around Santa Fe.

Animal Protection of New Mexico began as Sangre de Cristo Animal Protection in 1979 and has been run by Executive Director Lisa Jennings since 1993. APNM is responsible for everything from 2007’s cockfighting ban to training New Mexico’s animal-control officers to more effectively fight animal cruelty.

SFR was present at the First Judicial District courthouse when the verdict in the long, arduous Carlos Fierro case was returned. Last November, the prominent 36-year-old Santa Fe attorney struck and killed William Tenorio outside of what was then WilLee’s Blues Club.

Tony Hillerman began his career as a journalist for The Santa Fe New Mexican and went on to author more than 30 books, most of which were mystery novels set in New Mexico—more specifically, Navajo lands. Hillerman died last October at the age of 83.

Deva Khalsa theorizes that as people feel like the economy, the country and their lives are spiraling out of control, they want to take charge of one of the few things they can dictate entirely: What goes into their bodies.